As of: 10/16/2021 8:39 a.m.
It has been a year since the teacher Samuel Paty was murdered in France – after he showed caricatures of Mohammed in class on the subject of freedom of expression. Today Paty is remembered across the country.
There is a deceptive silence in the small Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. The youngsters are still at school when a strollers show the place where the history teacher Samuel Paty was murdered. Less than 400 meters away.
Pink plastic flowers – stuck in the wooden fence – and a printed note with the expression of solidarity “Je suis Prof” – I am a teacher – remind of the cruel act of October 16, 2020. It was a shock for the residents of the community, says the walker. “Many ask: why did he talk about it? He knew it was dangerous, very much so.”
Since then, she has been paying attention to what she says on the street.
Teacher: No longer teaching like before the attack
Nobody at Samuel Paty’s school wants to talk to the press. After school is over, two teachers ask the journalists not to do interviews and to let the youngsters go home in peace. Samuel Paty’s colleagues only broke their silence once when they were talking to the radio station France Inter recently. You no longer teach the way you did before the attack, says a teacher. And one teacher reports:
I said to myself: we will avoid some topics because they could be controversial. We don’t know what the children are saying at home. Not all of them are like that, of course. But yeah, I pay more attention to what I say.
Because it was a student who set this spiral of violence in motion. She is said to have spread lies about Samuel Paty’s class. Her father then complained about him on the Internet.
Muslims are increasingly under general suspicion
For the teachers, but also the students, it was difficult to process, says a mother in front of the school. She’s a Muslim and doesn’t want to speak into the microphone. Her daughter was in Samuel Paty’s class and she liked her teacher. After the murder, her daughter asked her: Is that Islam? Of course not, says my mother. But Muslims are increasingly under general suspicion in France, she says.
“It’s a terrible situation for us,” said the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, in a television interview. “As French citizens of the Muslim faith, we experience a double punishment: It is very difficult for us to understand that a man, a barbarian, has beheaded a person, a teacher, in the name of our holy book.”
Memorial march through Conflans-Sainte-Honorine
Hafiz and 29 other imams attended the homage to Samuel Paty in front of the school on Friday to show their solidarity. Schools across France have remembered the teacher – with minutes of silence, devotions and specially designed lessons. Trees were planted. That touched the Paty family very much, says their lawyer Virginie Leroy: “Every homage is a sign against radical Islamism. It’s about celebrating freedom of expression. That’s how it has to be.”
A memorial march through Conflans-Sainte-Honorine leads from Freedom Square on Saturday. This is a must, says a local resident. “This is an event that has shaped everyone. In the name of the freedom of expression and the commitment of this teacher. You must not kill anyone for this. That is unimaginable.”